Penalty Force for Coupling Materials with Coulomb Friction

Area of Science:

• Computational physics
• Contact mechanics
• Numerical simulation

Background:

• Simulating contact between objects, especially deformable ones, is challenging.
• Accurate friction modeling is crucial for realistic physical interactions.
• Existing methods may suffer from instability or drift over time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel penalty force for enforcing contact with accurate Coulomb friction.
• To ensure compatibility with implicit time integration and optimization-based methods.
• To create a general contact force applicable to various simulation scenarios.

Main Methods:

• A novel penalty force formulation is proposed.
• The force is designed for compatibility with fully-implicit and optimization-based time integration schemes.
• The method is tested for its ability to handle collisions between deformable objects and coupling with rigid bodies or the material point method.

Main Results:

• The proposed force accurately enforces Coulomb friction.
• Stable stacking of objects is achieved without temporal drift, even when solvers are not fully converged.
• The contact force is general, applicable to deformable-deformable, rigid-deformable, and material point method interactions.
• A practical solution for the resulting asymmetrical system is provided.

Conclusions:

• The novel penalty force offers a robust and accurate solution for contact simulation with Coulomb friction.
• It enhances simulation stability and eliminates drift, improving the reliability of results.
• Its generality makes it a versatile tool for a wide range of computational physics applications.